Patient Relevant Outcome Measures for use In Systematic Evaluation

This project aimed to find out which outcomes service users felt were most important to measure when evaluating the success of interventions.

We interviewed people with a diagnoses of depressive disorder, bipolar, or schizophrenia. We used nominal group techniques and asked service users to rate a series of psychometric scales, which were commonly used in evaluating the effectiveness of mental health interventions.

The findings reveal that service users should be more involved in research and should be asked what they feel is working for them; many participants felt that research was often being done through talking to professionals and not service users. Participants felt that it was important to consider the relationship between the client and professional, as this would be key to the success of any treatment or intervention.